Skeletons, horses, mermaids

Barbie Horse Ed continued apace over the last few days and the game was completed (with J having done a few of the harder parts) yesterday for the first time. When F got up this morning, she came straight down and started playing again - she told me she had got up very early and one street light was still on. And she put the living-room lights on and turned the game volume down really low and generally behaved in a rather sensible and grown-up fashion, in direct contrast to what she is doing now, rolling on her back and making distracting loud noises at a particular frequency that vibrates my brain in a bad way and makes it really difficult to write this with any coherence.

We have had some good conversations - some about skeletons: we talked about what skeletons are, what bones do as opposed to muscle, how hers are still growing, touched briefly on death and what happens to your body. She asked what a cat skeleton would look like, so I found her some on Google images. We went on to look at skeletons of dogs, horses, mice, giraffes and fish, looking at the characteristic differences in each animal and discussing that a bit. She was particularly interested in the tailbones.
F commented that she has 2 things that do everything that she does - her skeleton and her shadow.

Other conversations covered the words filly, colt, mare, stallion, horse, pony, foal - I think the source of inspiration is apparent!
We have also looked at maps a bit more.
On Sunday she gave me a lovely picture of her and me together - I have a huge smile and a surplus of fingers. It's a lovely pic, I'm going to laminate it and keep it forever.

She has been doing lots of storytelling/imaginative play, including a dinosaur egg adventure, involving much carrying and rolling of the biggish heavy egg-shaped stone we have in our house, which is always extremely popular with children partly due to its hazard level and has been named The Toe-Crusher by Mrs MonsterTeeny. She has also been immersed in mermaid stories and played some kind of game in which her trousers were being waved around as an imaginary jellyfish trying to sting people. Her imagination is very strong at the moment, and visibly very active at all times. Along with it, her sense of humour and some other personality traits are developing - a few times recently I've noticed new turns of phrase and use of language that were really amusing, along with the beginnings of irony and that kind of more complicated humour.

One example was when she was talking about her Barbie Horse game and kept using the word 'pony' to refer to a foal. She stopped in mid-sentence, heaved a dramatic sigh and said 'Oh, come on F' out loud, having a little pep talk with herself!
Another was when I was closing the top living-room window and she said 'Don't open the big windows or I might try and fall out of them' in a general tone of 'well, you know what kids are like'.

She's had her first paper cut (The Little Mermaid) and insisted on a plaster. I feel like it's some kind of literary baptism or something. She reads this book over and over, making up her versions of the story, transposing characters from Mermaid Magic, which has just completed its stint as our bedtime book.

I have just completed 3 jobs on time (with the invaluable help of my glamourous assistant!) and am really looking forward to some relaxation (red, comes in a green bottle) now. This afternoon we are going to Music and Movement, probably for the last time. The rest of this week is largely social: Katya here on Wednesday after yoga, possibly Anya on Thursday at hers and the MonsterTeenies here on Friday. Then it's the weekend and on the Monday after, we're off to my mum's for a few days.